(NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)ENVIRONMENT

DAVID NIELD25 FEBRUARY 2021

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-major-ocean-current-might-be-on-the-verge-of-a-climate-change-tipping-point

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) sea currents are vital in transporting heat from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, but new research suggestsclimate changemight knock the AMOC out of action much sooner than we anticipated.

That could have profound, large-scale impacts on the planet in terms of weather patterns, upending agricultural practices, biodiversity, and economic stability across the vast areas of the world that the AMOC influences.

The problem is the rate at which Earth is warming up and melting the ice in the Arctic: according to the researchers’ new models, this speed of temperature increase means the risk of hitting the tipping point for the AMOC going dormant is now an urgent concern.

(University of Copenhagen)

“It is worrying news,”says physicist Johannes Lohmann, from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. “Because if…